Northeast: Fantastic preparation for 2017
Wednesday 22nd March 2017
Sam Northeast enjoyed scoring an unbeaten century in front of the England selectors and said it was ideal preparation for the 2017 season.
The Kent captain said: “It’s nice to be out here, it’s an honour to come and play in this. I felt in good touch going into this week so I was confident inside but I’m very happy tonight that we’ve won 2-0 and I’ve got some runs on the board
“I’ve batted with Daws (Liam Dawson) quite a bit. I played England Under-19s with him growing up, so we get on pretty well. We communicated what we thought was a good score, we said 320-330, kept it ticking over, then said let’s go and have a bit of fun, and we did really.
“We ended up getting 340 which was brilliant. It was a good wicket, what Farby and Andy Flower have said is go out there and express yourself, don’t have any fear of failure, just go out there and have a good time.
“There are competitive highly skilful cricketers playing against each other. It’s nice to be around – I haven’t been around since Under-19 days and it’s fantastic preparation for me as well for the season coming up.
“We’ve gelled as a side really well and we’ve been playing some really good cricket.
“I made sure I wasn’t going to do anything different from what I’ve been doing at Kent – but it’s still really nice to score some runs in front of the selectors.”
Northeast is set to feature in the final North v South fixture on Tuesday before leading the MCC squad against Champion County Middlesex in Abu Dhabi on Sunday.